At any rate, I started out by giving up on removing the horn. That bolt was really insistant on staying put, and I just didn't see any real reason to remove it. So after that was decided, I went on to removing the front fender. After the fender, I loosened the upper and lower fork bolts, removed the big plate that says "Honda" across the forks, and wiggled the forks loose. I was pretty worried for a minute that I'd scratch them or do some other terrible thing, but they came off relatively easily.
The next part was, while not the trickiest, the most tedious: I removed the ignition assembly, which was bolted in with little tiny bolts which in turn were behind other bolts and up against structural pieces and etc. Since the bolts were literally right up against the assembly, the only wrench that would fit was the closed O-wrench (10mm), and since there was a piece of frame right next to it, I could only turn the wrench about a quarter-turn at a time. Then I'd have to take the wrench off, reposition it (I really wish a ratchet would have fit...), and repeat. It took me about an hour to get those two bolts off. Feh. But they eventually loosened up and came out, and I could remove the ignition assembly. Peter disconnected the wiring to that assembly (also conveniently housed in the headlight housing), and decided to disconnect the rest of the wires in there as well. This came in handy later, as we will see.
It was fun to take off the huge steering head nut -- again, a ratchet would have been useful, but I didn't have one large enough, so I used Peter's huge wrench instead. He finally got the bolt off, and then we were good to go. I removed the upper and lower fork bolts completely (losing one of the lower ones in the process...), and since all the wires were disconnected, we could just lift the entire upper fork frame right off the bike. So, no more headlight or turn signals, no upper forks, no ignition panel. All that's left is, well, the steering head. (picture)
The next step was the gross one -- the steering head assembly slid right out, and with it came the 37 loose ball bearings and a whole bunch of 15-year-old gummy grease. This is the gooeyist, nastyist stuff ever. It's worse than the time you left that caramel in your pocket. It's worse than the time you got gum in your hair. It's just gross. While I was reaching up into the steering assembly and pulling ball bearings out of this sludgy goo, I seriously felt like I was delivering alien babies. There's no other way to discribe this crap (picture. And another.). So I think I got out all the bearings (there's a good possibility that I missed one, which escaped somewhere). I took about a half a million paper towels and tried to get most of the grease out of the races, but, damn, they're nasty. I'm not even convinced that I'll need to reuse the old races, since they were loose ball bearings and my new set is assembled (Yay! Less grease!), but I'm not sure yet. I just know it's nasty.
So that's where I ended for today. Here's how the bike is looking. I'm a little more nervous than before about putting it back together correctly, but I think that's more a result of my current pissy mood than anything actually bike-related. So I'm going to go to bed. :)